The Engineering Cameras and Microphone on the Perseverance Rover (2020)

The LCAM data has been posted to the "raw images" site at the link below, although they do appear to be processed (contrast enhanced) so you may need to wait for the PDS release for the real raw data. You can tell by looking at the images before heatshield separation or after touchdown that they have been contrast enhanced (all images were taken at similar exposure times).

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/?af=LCA...

Per Monday’s press conference, all of the EDL cameras and the microphone were commercial off-the-shelf products. They were lightly modified to reduce the likelihood of, say, electronic components off-gassing, but were not mission critical. They were simply put there to prove a point that, hey, if we want to do something cool and can’t justify the cost of bespoke hardware, we can try to use non-space rated hardware so long as we do no harm to the spacecraft or its mission objectives. I’d say the fact that all the cameras worked, and that the microphone came online during initial surface operations checkout (recording some very cool sounds from the surface), meant that the experiment was a rousing success.

They have certainly been vague on those details. I assume it is because they are investigating, but maybe they are trying to protect an engineering failure or some otherwise embarrassing detail from leaking. "Forgot to plug it in" might make for some ugly headlines. Probably better to just tell us already since it will inevitably come out.

You do understand they have ability to replace almost all of the software? So a problem with ffmpeg would be a nuisance at worst.

A similar example albeit an order of magnitude smaller: I work with a space instrument which includes a camera, and for various purposes some times we need to send down entire images. Due to the of course limited bandwidth, there is an option to compress the image to a jpeg and send it down. The jpeg compression is written from scratch.

Of course much simpler than ffmpeg and video encoding, but reinventing the wheel is not at all uncommon in aerospace (and curiously enough, reinventing the wheel is precisely what the entire sector is trying to avoid..)

My guess is that if FFmpeg didn't exist, they would still not try to develop the equivalent in-house. They might have licensed something commercial.